Contemporary Thriller

Nikolai: I have been a contract killer since I was a boy. For years I savored the fear caused by my name, the trembling at the sight of my tattoos. If you saw my eyes, it was the last vision you'd have. With her I am the mark, and I am ready to lie down and let her capture me. Opening my small, scarred heart to her brings out my enemies. I will carry out one last hit, but if they hurt her I will bring the world down around their ears.

HAWK - I lost everything years ago. My brother. My family. Everything that ever meant anything to me. Now the Lords of Carnage are my life. Anything I need, the club provides. Anything else is unimportant. At least, that's what I tell myself until I meet Samantha Jennings. She stirs something inside me I haven't felt for years. Back when I had hope. Back when I thought life would give you what you asked for if you wanted it bad enough. Wanting is dangerous. I've learned that lesson. But when I look in those deep brown eyes, I want Samantha.

When San Antonio FBI agent Garon Grier buys a ranch in Jacobsville, Texas, the strong, silent loner is hoping to mend some broken family fences. He is not looking for love when he finds an unexpected, unwanted attraction to the girl next door, a shy, lovely woman who believes some secrets are best kept hidden. But the truth will prove just as dangerous when Garon tackles the most difficult case of his career: hunting an escaped convict, a child predator whose former victims are all dead. All except one.

Taylor is the name, John Taylor. My card says I'm a detective, but what I really am is an expert on finding lost things. It's part of the gift I was born with as a child of the Nightside. I left there a long time ago, with my skin and sanity barely intact. Now I make my living in the sunlit streets of London. But business has been slow lately, so when Joanna Barrett showed up at my door, reeking of wealth, asking me to find her runaway teenage daughter, I didn't say no.

Sugar arrives in the small town of Bigelow, Arkansas, like an ominous storm. She saunters down the street in a blonde wig and spiked heels, cigarette dangling between red-painted lips. Without even speaking to her, the women in town hate her. But when she moves in next door to Pearl, a woman who tragically lost her daughter 15 years earlier, the two women bond over tragic pasts.

It's been a year since ex-Navy SEAL Ethan Kelly saw his wife Rachel alive. Now he's received an anonymous phone call claiming Rachel is alive. To find her, Ethan will have to doge bullets, cross a jungle, and risk falling captive to a deadly drug cartel that threatens his own demise.

Black Hollow is a town with a dark secret. For centuries, residents have foretold the return of the Dreamwalker - an ominous figure from local folklore said to lure young women into the woods and possess them. Yet the boundary between fact and fable is blurred by a troubling statistic: Occasionally, women do go missing. And after they return, they almost always end up dead.

Anthony Award-winning author Charlaine Harris has earned a devoted fan base with her USA Today and New York Times best-selling Sookie Stackhouse mystery series. All Together Dead features more dark but frequently hilarious adventures of buxom, blonde, beautiful, and telepathic cocktail waitress Sookie, who prefers the company of vampires to that of the living.

It was inescapably chilling, as if the murderer was methodically working his way down a page torn from the phone book. The three victims brutally killed in their own homes had one thing in common: They were all listed as M. Douglas. The fact that Mara Douglas is next on the list has her jumping at shadows, until FBI agent Aidan Shields shows up to make sure she doesn't become the fourth victim.

Precious Ramotswe, Botswana's premier lady detective, is a little short on help. The codirector of the agency, Grace Makutsi, is busy with her own case, her client none other than their erstwhile assistant, Mr. Polopetsi, who has unwittingly involved himself in a pyramid scheme. The agency's other assistant, Charlie, may also need more help than he can offer, as he is newly embroiled in a romance with a glamorous woman about whom the others have their doubts.

On a beautiful May morning at New York's John F. Kennedy airport, two planes have just departed for San Francisco - one a 757, another a smaller Airbus A321. At a security checkpoint, TSA agent Bernice Adams finds a postcard of the Golden Gate Bridge bearing an ambiguous - perhaps ominous - message. Her supervisor dismisses her concerns, but Bernice calls security, and soon Ben Waterman arrives. A senior Homeland Security agent, Ben too becomes suspicious. Who left the postcard behind, which flight is that person on, and what exactly does the message mean?

Scrap Allenbach is a living legend to the Steel Bones MC. A vigilante hero. Ten years ago, he gave up his freedom for me. I never asked him to. Now he's back, with some idea about how it's gonna be. He's wrong. Things are different now. I'm not the same girl he knew. After what happened, I'll never be that person again. Not with the baggage I carry and the secrets I keep.

As a member of Walker Security, Adrian Mack has found redemption for a walk on the dark side. For two years, the former FBI agent was undercover in the notorious Texas Kings biker club. For two years he changed, he became one of them, and when the bust happened, he didn't know who he was anymore. On a hit list with a price on his head, he disappeared and joined Walk Security, but now, the trial is set to start and witnesses are dropping like flies.

Her family's cottage on the New Jersey shore was a place of freedom and innocence for Julie Bauer - until her 17-year-old sister, Isabel, was murdered. It's been more than 40 years since that August night, but Julie's memories of her sister's death still shape her world. Now someone from her past is raising questions about what really happened that night. About Julie's own complicity. About a devastating secret her mother kept from them all.

USA Today best-selling and award-winning author Barbara Freethy writes wonderfully entertaining contemporary novels. Summer Secrets is the compelling story of three sisters and the burden of the terrible secret they share.

Number-one New York Times best-selling author Charlaine Harris has won numerous awards for her Sookie Stackhouse Southern Vampire series, which has been adapted into the hit HBO show True Blood. In this 13th and final book, a murder rocks the town of Bon Temps and Sookie is arrested for the crime. After making bail, she sets out to clear her name - but her investigation only leads to more deaths.

New York Times best-selling author Charlaine Harris thrills listeners with the fourth book of her spectacular Sookie Stackhouse series. Driving home from work, barmaid and telepath Sookie Stackhouse discovers vampire and area sheriff Eric on the side of the road missing his shirt, his shoes and his memories. Featuring vampires, werewolves and magic galore, Dead to the World will satisfy any listener's craving for the supernatural.

Tabloid reporter Hope Adams appears to live the life of an ordinary working girl. But, in addition to possessing the beauty of a Bollywood princess, Hope has other unique traits. For she is a half-demon - a human fathered by a demon. And she has inherited not only a gift for seeing the past but a hunger for chaos - along with a talent for finding it wherever she can.

For five years Viktor Prakenskii has put his life on hold to take down the world's most feared motorcycle club from the inside. But carrying out the insane violence and seeing their exploitation of the innocent has brought his traumatic past roaring back. And there's only one cure: to see the wife he left behind.

With her knack for being in trouble's way, Sookie witnesses the firebombing of Merlotte's, the bar where she works. Since Sam Merlotte is now known to be two-natured, suspicion falls immediately on the anti-shifters in the area. Sookie suspects otherwise, but her attention is divided when she realizes that her lover, Eric Northman, and his "child", Pam, are plotting to kill the vampire who is now their master. Gradually, Sookie is drawn into the plot - which is much more complicated than she knows.